


Inheritors

by Farla



Category: Pokemon
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Nonhuman, Original Trainer, POV Original Character, POV Pokemon, Pokemon Journey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2009-11-24
Updated: 2010-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-03 16:21:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Farla/pseuds/Farla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story where the main character is both a trainer and a pokemon, and humans aren't even on the map. Even stranger than it sounds.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

Inheritors  
_(A Pokemon Journey)_

Beyond the outer wall of the room the minds of the birds shifted, first songs of the day approaching half over and the beginnings of fatigue mixed with accomplishment seeping through the wrinkles of their minds like a drop of water spreading through the fibers of a scrap of paper bit by bit. This he woke to, pulling in and processing his dream by habit, but he remained lying there on his stomach until the alarm rang.

He flicked it off and opened his eyes to see the blue numbers. Dawn shifted with each new day, and the thoughts of birds shifted with it. The clock was mindless but exact. That was why they kept them.

He pushed his body upright as his mind stretched out, shaking and fluffing itself out like a fledgling chick, the feathery edges of his thoughts brushing against the round, self-contained walls of Dama's mind below and leftward. That was the kitchen. Dama was cooking, then. There was the first true thought of the day: _Oh. I hope I won't have to stay and eat breakfast. Not today._

The last vestiges of his dream consumed, he stood, then hopped over to his dresser in a single motion, pulling on clothes and smoothing down fur ruffled in the process. He was outwardly placid by the standards of the birds outside or most of the others on the ground, in the normal way of his kind, though anyone familiar with them would have seen the suppressed excitement in his slightly too abrupt motions, the impatience that showed in how he had to twice pause and backtrack to complete the prior task, a final button left undone, a pantsleg not quite pulled down. The naturally flighty birds would never have noticed such small things, nor would another of his kind, not with the swirling core of emotion in the center of his mind so obvious to see instead. It was the first day of the month.

He bounded across the hallway, then trotted down the stairs one by one, resisting the urge to skip over some. The door was near the bottom of the stairwell.

Mada was there as well in the kitchen, his mind the same rounded impenetrable and immovable feel, like anchors or guideposts.

"I am not that hungry today. I want to leave now," he told them, heading for the door.

A feeling like a heavy blanket dropped over his mind, morphing on the instant of contact into a vicelike steel clamp. He spun on one foot and marched neatly down the lower hallway and into the kitchen, where one arm pulled out a chair and he sat down.

Dama put a plate of grilled fish in front of him. "Breakfast."

"I hate it when you do that," he said, sulking.

"Breakfast," said Mada. A second later a fork thunked meaningfully down next to his plate. "And using that. Do not eat like a pokemon."

He set the fish back down on the plate and obediently wrapped one hand around the fork and began pulling the fish apart with it. "I am going to be an adult soon and you won't be able to move me around any longer," he told them, stuffing flaky bits of fish into his mouth.

"Adults eat their breakfast without needing people to make them," he was reminded.

He scowled, the expression faint on his face and his mind radiating the emotion with the indignant force of a child's crocodile tears, and shoveled more marinated fish into his mouth. "Done now." His fork clattered down again.

"**Swallow**."

"Done now," he said, swallowing. "I want to leave. Really."

"Impatience will get you nowhere," Mada said. A heavy blanket feeling brushed his mind again, in jest. "Is that how you want to act on the first day of becoming an adult, childishly?"

"I am not impatient," he protested instantly. "I just want to go. When are we leaving then?"

"When all of us finish eating."

He scowled again.

"Have a grapefruit half."

For all the implacability of the two adults, they finished eating more quickly than on a normal morning, a fact entirely lost on him as he finished off the grapefruit and then sat bouncing the balls of his feet against the floor until the others were done. He jumped up immediately and started for the door, mindful not to run. _Impatience will get you nowhere._

They could have gone there almost instantly, of course. But like the rest of their kind the three avoided teleportation under most circumstances, preferring to move physically from one place to another, and so they walked instead through the quiet streets of Fuchsia.

Starting points were not officially restricted to any particular city, any more than the slow pace of their walk was mandated. It was simply the way things were done that journeys began in Fuchsia, Pallet or Cinnabar, with only the rarest of exceptions. Had they lived in one of the other cities, they'd have traveled more quickly, but as it was their home was perhaps a half hour's walk away from the school, a perfectly manageable distance.

As they approached he could feel another boy heading away, in the direction of the edge of the city, and the dissolving traces of others who had done similarly not long before. Impatience burst through his mind and the tip of his tail flexed, causing the cloth over it to slide down a bit, uncomfortably ruffling his fur the wrong way in the process. All three things earned him a pair of mildly disapproving glances from the adults, and, impatience bleeding into embarrassment, he fixed his clothing and clamped down on his thoughts of hurrying and the sense that the other children were ahead of him.

He did take just slightly longer steps, and, indulging him, this went unmentioned by both adults. Within five minutes they had arrived, and he headed through the doors and up to the adult behind the counter.

Much of registering was simply a ritualized formality. There was no true reason why he had to come and stand there to be handed the black pokeball for his starter, or why he needed an official ID card when he was known to any adult. It was simply the way things were done. He was asked his name.

"Deus."


	2. 2

Neoteny is found throughout nature in many species making the transition to greater intelligence. While typically described as a developmental slowing or delay, such terms are deeply misleading.

-

The area beyond Fuchsia was lightly forested, interspaced with open sections of green meadow or dry ground. He could feel the minds of various local pokemon all around. Part of this was the challenge, though: it wasn't right to simply find one and make it come to him. Instead he focused, reversing things so instead of his mind passively listening, it pulled inward and broadcast something akin to refracting light around him, becoming invisible to their minds. Radiating his nonexistence to any pokemon he encountered, he set off to watch them through his own eyes.

There were some birds, but he had no real interest in flying things, finding them bland and a bit absurd in their clumsy insistence on wings. The beedrill he came upon next he considered even less suitable, looking at the bugs with an aloof but disgusted disdain as they tended their eggs and pupae, and he didn't even spare a glance for the weedle he passed, the small things chewing thoughtlessly at leaves. A pack of nidoran argued in excited, sharp sounds, oblivious to his presence, but after some consideration he decided against them for the moment.

Not long after he came to a small open area where the soil changed to something drier and looser. A sandshrew poked its head up amid open soil and some rocks, and he walked over to get a better look. He watched it dig industriously through the sandy soil and decided it would make a good pokemon.

He tossed the black pokeball. The sandshrew had the most amusingly exaggerated look on its face the instant after the ball hit, a comically dismayed and disbelieving expression as if it couldn't fathom how this had happened.

A relatively good description, as of course it couldn't. It was a sandshrew.

He picked up the pokeball and then unfettered his mind and let it stretch outward again to search, brushing against the loose thoughts of the other children, most similarly questing for someone who had completed their first task.

Another boy was nearby. He headed in the boy's direction, as the boy headed toward him. Presently they met physically.

"Sen," introduced the other boy, as he said, "Deus."

Sen had a second pokeball on him, a plain white one, indicating he'd captured another pokemon already. Deus wondered if he should have delayed the first trainer fight similarly, then pushed the thought aside. He had wanted a battle. There would be time for captures later.

He released the sandshrew as Sen opened his own black pokeball housing his first pokemon.

It was a female nidoran, looking a bit worn but still in decent condition. The sandshrew and it stared at each other.

He said immediately, "Scratch," knowing that whoever reacted first could get a free hit in. Sen gave the same order. The nidoran moved first, charging forward and rearing up to swat at the sandshrew, which ducked and twisted sideways. The nidoran twisted to follow, and the second hit struck it across the face. It let out a chattering squeak and smacked back with its own yellow paw. They traded blows like this for several minutes, and eventually the nidoran slumped to the ground, panting and dazed.

Sen recalled it and sent out the next pokemon, a somewhat sleepy-looking oddish. Like the first it looked like it had already battled, presumably against the nidoran earlier. After the sandshrew landing a scratch attack or two on it, the oddish managed to wrap its leaves around the sandshrew's side and execute an absorb attack.

The sandshrew shuddered and then went limp, unconscious.

The oddish was recalled and they traded compliments and politeness before parting ways, Sen heading off directly while he first bent and touched one hand to the sandshrew's side, focusing on recovery. It opened its eyes and got to its feet.

It stared at him, its mind radiating anxious confusion. \\\I'm capture-\\\ it stammered, words simple and crude. \\\How'd you? Why you want what do you happen now I'm.\\\

"I am a trainer," he informed it. "So you are my pokemon now." He tapped the starting pokeball and watched it sucked back into the black sphere, then considered his options.

He could remain in the area to look for another pokemon, or he could start toward Cinnabar now. He hesitated, tail tip flicking from side to side above his shoulders. Another pokemon...seeing Cinnabar...Cinnabar, he decided. He pulled his mind in, molding and binding it into a clumsy approximation of the rounded smoothness of an adult's containment, and feeling pleased and grownup, he started south, bounding in long, psi-enhanced leaps.

He reached the shrubby plains between the woods and beach before long, and spied a lone doduo in his path. He'd been going too fast to pay much attention to notice most pokemon during his travel through the forest, but the plains were more open, and his eyes narrowed at the sight of the two-headed bird. He'd left the beedrill be, but this was a greater irritant. He took one further leap, coming to a halt near it, and in a burst of childish annoyance, released the sandshrew again and ordered it to attack.

Again, the sandshrew didn't react swiftly, giving the doduo time to bob both heads and then peck at it before it swiped the other pokemon across one face.

The bird was the stronger fighter, and before long the sandshrew was nearly beaten while the doduo was only half injured. He stepped over to touch the battered sandshrew with one hand and recover it a second time, ordering another attack as he pulled his arm back. It returned to scratching and tackling, and finally the two-minded bird collapsed.

Deus recalled his sandshrew and looked at the now unconscious pokemon a moment, feeling pleased. Then he continued toward Cinnabar


	3. 3

Cinnabar was nice.

By any outward standard, at least. It was the least altered of any of the original cities, and the most closely maintained. Most of the industry of the place had been simply shut down without replacement, and the buildings left as they were, the strain of high population itself ended, and by now the last remnants of past pollution had long faded away entirely. The place left was pristine. The waters glittered with pure blue clarity and the beaches were long unbroken expanses of light sand. The whole of the island was something like an extended historical site, or something like a shrine. To him the image of what it was was overlaid with all it had been, and he could scarcely see the place without the weight of history, of meanings attached and importance imbued.

All trainers went to Cinnabar before making their journeys throughout the rest of the region.

He landed at the beach, on the edge of the dry sand, just beyond where the highest of the waves could reach, and continued the rest of the way more slowly, and walking. Not, as before, because of adults present and a desire to behave similarly mature under their attention, but of honest awe, the meaning of the place he stood in rendering him humble and reverent at even the smallest of things.

He traveled through the side streets a bit, thinking of history and legend, until he noticed that the other children had begun to cluster and made his way to where the new trainers were collecting before the formal speech began.

They eyed each other a bit shyly, minds inexpertly shielded and bodies fidgeting from nervousness and excitement despite their best efforts at adult composure. One boy's tail even thumped the ground once, like a baby's.

It was an unfamiliar thing, being around so many other children and without the twin presences of their damas and madas, even with the reassuring solidity of so many adult minds around them. It lent additional weight to their surroundings as well, or perhaps their surroundings lent additional weight to the gathering. Deus was not sure who among them first thought _Imagine, being the first. Your mind alone amid the empty world_ but it spread through the group in a quick ripple, responses rising up in its wake like muted thunder after lightning -  
_not alone, truly, she'd have been too_  
_none of them, no adults, alone_  
_both, the other way too, too, nothing sending_  
_alone_  
_no adults, no order, imagine just the chaos of your own first thoughts_  
_**she'd have been too, but not like an adult, not above  
**__alone  
__**only like a clever hypno, her, not an adult, not the same**__  
imagine doing that  
alone  
__**not alone**_

The stabilizing focus of the adult swept over them, and they quieted, pulling back to only their own thoughts. Deus focused on the adult as he began to speak.

It was nothing new, really, but in the excitement of what it meant and the place around him the importance of it swept him up and he hung on every word.

"Here," the adult said, "was the beginning, and here too was the genesis of the end." And he spoke of history and legend. Of the place, of the first. Of the meaning of their journeys and the task before them. "We are the ones who were worthy to inherit. The world is yours and there is no higher calling than to have mastery over it." And he spoke of past and future, the familiar words made new to Deus by the surroundings and the undertaking before him. And they listened, spellbound, as he wove meaning into the world.

When the speech over, the children split apart again. This was in part because they had different ideas of where they wished to go next, and in part because, much as some pokemon young would naturally gravitate together, they sought a minimum of distance, like repelling magnets.

For Deus' part, he decided to seek his next pokemon then, wanting one from Cinnabar. Others spread out to explore the city or in the direction of the gym, with one or two going to the beaches to look for water types, and Deus headed toward the mountain.

The mansion was at the base of the volcano, near the outskirts of the city. Nowhere was the museumlike preservation that pervaded the town so evident as at the blasted shell of the building, kept in a state of perpetually half-collapsed ruin. Weeds grew up around it but were kept in check from progressing further than a few pushing between the cracks in the ground and form transitioning from the fast growing soft greenery to older woody saplings. The roof had collapsed in places but all deterioration had been halted at some unknown point, and closer examination by more experienced eyes would have shown subtle but extensive work to keep the badly supported overhangs at the edge of the holes in place. Deus, though, was too intimidated to do more than stare up at it from the street. The idea of such destruction was alien to his own life, and subconsciously he stilled to almost a statue in response. Old legend and imposing present merged to something awe-filling, impressive and frightening.

Before he left it he reached out impulsively to touch one of the wooden posts that made up the outer fence. It was splitting from water and heat and age, and under his focus it knit back together until it was whole and smooth.

It was a common response to the place. The fenceposts were dotted with pristine new-looking beams and others just starting to show signs of wear, no two showing the same apparent age though they were all part of the same original structure.

_To destroy destruction_ he thought quietly, the words somewhere between a familiar prayer and comforting lullaby to him.


	4. 4

Neoteny is generally thought of as a period of extended childhood, but may be more accurately called a period of extended growth. Species displaying neoteny are generally larger than their original counterparts.

-

Deus headed into the forest at the base of the dormant volcano, thoughts reaching out tentatively for the minds of pokemon, skirting nervously around the area of the mansion as he did so. There were vulpix not far, a litter probably denning near one of the closer veins of magma that ran through the mountain's base.

As he had guessed, the den was dug into one side of the volcano, heat wafting up through the small opening. He reached out and grabbed the tiny minds, marching them toward him. Within a minute they had assembled at the mouth of the den.

They were young enough to be white in color and single tailed, and their eyes were still closed. He examined them, deciding after a bit of consideration on a slim female that seemed alert and already showing signs of a lithe, speedy body structure. No battle was necessarily. He simply tapped one of his white pokeballs against its side, then directed the rest back into the warm center of the den.

It would be too young to battle for a while. He cast about for the mind of the mother not far off, pulling times from her thoughts. A week or so, probably a bit less than the rest of the kits as pokemon generally developed more quickly apart from their littermates. He calculated and decided that it would likely be ready by the time he reached Pewter.

Should he look for another before trying the gym? It would make it easier. But he wasn't interested in the other pokemon he felt around the area, certainly not the floppy, underwhelming water types, and catching excess was discouraged. Doing that was missing the point entirely, and childish in its own way.

The sandshrew should be able to handle it. If not, he could always try again.

He stretched out his thoughts and oriented to the gym. He almost began toward it when, remembering, he released the sandshrew again to fix its injuries from the past fight so it would be able to last longer against the gym's pokemon. He felt pleased he had needed no reminding in the matter, and bounded in the direction of the gym with a sense of self-satisfaction.

The gym building he came to brought to mind ancient temples, with sweeping expanses carved out of the heavy stone of the volcano itself. That wasn't at all impressive on its own. He knew it had undoubtedly been made before, though he found it hard to imagine how they'd reached to carve away such a high ceiling, and simply how much effort it would have been for them to make such openness in solid rock, and he couldn't help but think of it as something done later, by people like him.

He continued in deeper, the heat growing slowly as he walked, making his unerring way through the twisting hallways toward the still stability of the gym's leader.

The arena room was still a way from the volcano proper, the temperatures hovering at the edge of a hundred degrees. It was enough to give fire types a bit of an edge, or enough to put water types at a slight disadvantage. His sandshrew should have no problem with it.

He greeted the adult, then, seeing his patient waiting, caught himself a moment later and remembered to give his name.

The adult nodded, and Deus felt a burst of happy accomplishment at navigating this first hurdle, which he quickly clamped down again so he didn't embarrass himself before the adult by acting like a child. The adult introduced himself formally as well, then released a growlithe.

Deus sent out the sandshrew.

"Scratch," he ordered it.

The sandshrew was having none of it. It evaluated its surroundings, particularly the growlithe in front of it, and then spun and started to flee from the charging fire type. Deus promptly reached out and grabbed it, spinning it back around and walking it to the growlithe. The growlithe bit. The sandshrew scratched. Deus moved it about the arena like that, the two pokemon trading blows, until at length the growlithe was beaten.

He released his hold on the sandshrew, which slumped down to sit wobbly on the ground, obviously in better condition than the growlithe and just as obviously not by much.

Deus had succeeded. Thrilled, he hopped over to the adult to take his badge, tail waving from side to side in sharp but unnoticed contrast to the stillness of the adult's own tail. He placed the volcano badge onto the first slot of his trainer card, then headed back to the quivering sandshrew, fixing it.

_It's late_, he thought as he headed out of the gym again, feeling in the small minds of pokemon thoughts of twilight, of sleeping or waking. He was tired, too, the exertion of the trip to Cinnabar and the sheer newness of everything wearing on him.

It wasn't a pokemon center, exactly, not in the old sense, but there was a place set up for pokemon to recuperate and trainers to rest. He headed there as darkness fell across Cinnabar.


	5. 5

He handed the adult his sandshrew. There was no need to do the same for the baby vulpix, so he kept that as he headed down the long passages, making his way to one far-flung room. The building was sprawling as a nature of its function, the lodging rooms spread far apart. They were not wasteful, though, so they filled up most of the space between with inert objects, thoughtless things that would cause no trouble: stored food and stacked medicine, books old and new, machinery. They were thoughtless things, so he paid them no mind. The room itself was small and five-sided, hewed out of the solid rock of the volcanic island.

He left out the vulpix. Pokemon needed time outside their pokeballs to mature. If he wanted it to be able to battle, he'd need to keep it out now. It was afraid a moment, which he dismissed as foolish as he changed out of his clothes. It sat quietly on the bed, now simply puzzled by its surroundings, and then it curled up against his side and they went to sleep.

He woke to find its mind filled with hungry, insistent thoughts. Half-awake with a child's indignation at the interruption, he threw out a query and one awake adult nudged his attention in the relevant direction, adding a slight chide at his unkempt thoughts.

He teleported the milky formula into the room and offered it to the vulpix, the fragments of his dream still tangling around his thoughts and making him groggy. He curled back up as the vulpix lapped, feeling a sort of content confusion and then the physical sense of it nosing his side, climbing over his leg and settling inside the crook of his tail.

Deus woke more smoothly in the morning, fed the vulpix again, retrieved his sand, and left for Pallet. He had the presence of mind to recall the vulpix before starting out.

He passed an outcropping before the mainland proper, and stopped. He could feel the faint spray of the ocean at his back where he'd landed, so he hopped across the sand into the thicker grasses further in before releasing the vulpix again. Its thoughts were of cold ground, so he picked it up. He carried it as he explored.

It turned out there were tangela there. Deus looked at them speculatively, feeling through the mind of the vulpix as he did so. No, it couldn't use fire moves yet, the capability a phantom feeling, sections of its mind holding the potential but the links to the body still undone, not unlike the six-sectioned partitioning in place for what was currently a single tail. Idly, he reached through and tried to move one, and saw the fur on a section of its tail ruffle, like it was dislodging a fly. Then the vulpix shook itself all over, thoughts filled with a puzzled sort of disapproval over what had just happened.

He doubted the sandshrew would have any chance against even the smaller of the tangela. He did want a grass pokemon, though... He reached out for the closest tangela, walking it back and forth. It was strong but frustratingly limited in its range of motion, with short stubby legs and only a few of its tendrils able to detangle from the main mass. Their coordination was terrible, no fine motor control and almost numb in sensation. He released it again, no longer interested, and recalled the vulpix so he could continue on his way to Pallet.

The city of Pallet, of course, was little different than Fuchsia, and so Deus didn't pay the same sort of attention as he had in Cinnabar. Instead he headed to the western area, looking for a new pokemon. He came upon another colony of nidoran and settled down with the vulpix in his lap to watch them for a time.

He finally selected a hyperactive male, mostly on its own merit but in part because the sandshrew had been male and the vulpix female, and this would continue the budding pattern. He stopped projecting nonexistence and released the sandshrew.

"Attack that one," he told it, directing its attention to the one he'd chosen. The sandshrew hesitated a moment, then charged into the scattering nidorans, cutting off the retreat of the male. It halted and made a feint to the right, as if to continue flight, then jabbed sharply with its horn at the sandshrew. They traded blows, the speedier sandshrew darting around and landing glancing blows, while the nidoran held its ground and tried for decisive hits. When it seemed to be tiring, Deus lobbed a pokeball at it. His third pokemon.

Nothing of importance was further west, just old ruins they had little interest in. There were some ditto to be found if he went far enough, but they'd be hard to find. Easier on all counts to wait and try for one that lived in more accessible places further on.

Besides, his current pokemon were more than enough to handle for the moment, Deus decided. Three would be enough for now, though it was less than half a full team. They would be hard enough to get used to, especially if he was keeping out the vulpix so much.

A glance over its tail showed that the fur had become ruffled at the tip, the first stage of splitting. It was still white, though the tips of its ears had begun to tint a very faint pinkish color.

His early impatience had lessened. _The importance of the journey is the journey_. He made his way at a far more sedate speed than his extended run through the Fuchsia forests, seeking out other trainers and pokemon for battles and stopping to feed the vulpix when it became hungry.

Despite his promptings, the sandshrew still lacked the coordination to kick sand accurately enough for a sand attack, and also had the bothersome tendency to interpret the order as a chance to burrow into the ground instead. It needed a lot more practice battling.

The nidoran was more pugnacious, but persisted in ignoring his orders to hold back or wait, throwing itself forward with all the undeserved confidence of a drunken brawler. After a few iterations of this, Deus stopped healing it and it rapidly gained a better respect for caution.

He ended up staying there for two days, remaining close enough to Pallet that he could return each night. There wasn't, in his estimation, any reason to continue at the moment, since he didn't intend to catch new pokemon for a while. Less admitted, he also felt better staying close to an area filled by adults while he became used to having pokemon, before setting out into the wilder areas.

And, after two days passed, he felt confident enough and familiar enough with the area, and with the pokemon, to continue along into the forest.


	6. 6

Most species possess juvenile characteristics that are shed upon adulthood, which range from distinct physical traits that have no counterpart on the adult, proportional differences such as the ratio of body to legs or head, to differences in metabolism or growth capabilities. In many cases there are differences in tissue type between juveniles and adults, ranging from surface distinctions such as fur type or skin color to ones as dramatic being made up of translucent spongy tissue verses firm opaque muscle.

-

The area between Pallet and Pewter was a long stretch of unbroken forest. Most of the early parts he came to were new growth, the thin-trunked, close-packed trees just starting to weed each other out, and a wide variety of low bushes and high grasses still covering the ground. There wasn't much variety of pokemon there, too forested for field pokemon and too close to field for forest ones. The inhabitants were largely jack of all trade sort of pokemon, rattata and spearow mixed with pidgey flying in to look for food from their nests deeper in. Partway through he came upon ruins, old buildings rapidly overtaken by forest, unmaintained roofs rotting and clinging vines covering their walls. He would be an adult by the time the first walls started to be pulled down by the weight of them.

A number of pikachu were living in one house, and it seemed rattata had taken over a number of others. Pidgey were nesting in the roofs. Deus was amused at the thought of pokemon living in houses like people, but they were too out of proportion for the illusion to really work and aside from that there was nothing really of interest there, and he ignored the buildings. He considered catching a pikachu, but he had three pokemon already and besides, he didn't really want a pokemon from this place. He continued on, making his way into older forest.

There was a large nest balanced in the interlocking branches of an old, twin-trunked tree. It was at the wrong angle to see the pidgey chicks inside, so Deus went upward to peer over the edge.

The chicks were tiny and recently hatched, with one still displaying damp, stuck-together feathers. Deus reached to part those where the wing buds were attached to the feathers of its left side.

The mother had just returned. It let out a shriek of anger, swooping down. Deus caught it easily, holding it still while he continued to examine the babies.

He'd inadvertently stopped its voice along with the rest of it, but its raging thoughts were loud enough to prickle on the edge of his mind and alert him to the attempt. He relaxed his grip partway and immediately it began shouting at him, \\\**My children! Mine!**\\\

"I am not going to catch them," Deus informed it, and, feeling this really should not need explaining, "I do not want a bird and also I have enough pokemon for now." He considered having one of his pokemon fight it, but it was too strong for them to do much of anything against it and so there wouldn't be a point.

The mother quieted down but continued to hiss through its open beak with each breath. Deus finished examining them and returned to the ground, letting go of the bird as he did so. It settled onto the nest, glaring at him. He paid no more attention to it and continued on his way.

The vulpix in his arms patted at his wrist with one paw, but it wasn't thinking anything in particular, just the general background noise of accepting puzzlement at the world at large. As he continued this shifted to include a new tint of confusion, and he examined it to see that its eyes had just begun to open to slits, though they were still unfocused.

He looked over its tail again. The tip was now a wide brushy tuft, and the rest of the tail was wider. The first split should be soon, he estimated, before the next day. He touched it, feeling the cleft forming down the center.

The sun was sinking below the trees, and Deus thought he should stop for the day. The vulpix's thoughts of food were growing more insistent again as well.

He settled down under an overhang made of rock and soil, releasing his pokemon. He shifted things a bit, smoothing the underside and shifting the tree branches above to more perfectly fit into the gaps. There were old dead limbs which he broke off to use as wood for the fire, snapping them into neat chunks. While the vulpix lapped at its supper, he stacked the logs for the campfire into a box shape, then set the vulpix inside when finished. Its now pinkish white nose flexed, sniffing at the dried, powdery wood.

He lit it on fire, the resulting foosh of air as the wood caught all at once almost drowning out the vulpix's surprised squeak.

The sandshrew was thinking horrified thoughts.

"Stop that," he told it.

\\\Lit on **fire**,\\\ it chattered. \\\Will you want a glass sandshrew, too?\\\

"It is not even that hot," Deus said, annoyed. The logs shifted a bit from the heat, and he reached in to fix it with one hand before his neatly built box was ruined. It was unlikely the sandshrew would have known, so he added, "Vulpix are fire pokemon," even though he still felt it should be obvious he'd know better than to make such a mistake.

\\\It's a child, even I can see,\\\ the sandshrew babbled insistently, still radiating horror and panic. Irritated, he flattened the emotions down.

The nidoran had no similar complaint, focusing instead on its desire to be fed. Deus offered it a radish, which it snatched greedily and began to gnaw. He tossed another to the sandshrew, which caught the root between its paws. It watched him distrustfully for a few moments, then began to chew at the food without taking its eyes off him.

Unbothered, Deus started to eat a sandwich.


	7. 7

The vulpix crawled out of the blaze, absently shook embers out of its fur, and curled up on the warm ground to sleep.

Deus finished his sandwich. The nidoran was thinking it wanted another radish. The sandshrew was thinking it could escape. He recalled the sandshrew and offered the nidoran another radish.

-

Deus was heading to Mt. Moon. Pewter had been unremarkable, little different from his home of Fuchsia. The vulpix was still not quite ready to be used, but the sandshrew and nidoran had been enough to win the gym battle.

It was a bit impatient of him (and therefore childish, and therefore missing the point, were it not the point to start with) to rush like this, but while he didn't think he was ready for a fourth pokemon yet, he wasn't expecting to encounter any pokemon he wanted in the area either, so heading through now wouldn't matter and so, he rationalized, wasn't really rushing.

And, well, the way to Mt. Moon was _interesting_. The whole area was mountainous, and just to get to the caves of Mt. Moon a path had needed to be hewed through the bedrock on the way. Pokemon must have been used, because it was much wider than it strictly needed to be despite the effort it would have taken for them to move rock on their own. Just for the large-scale, though, because the edges were craggy, irregular and unfinished. It was always strange to encounter things like that. Bits here and there had been smoothed, mostly at the corners where trainers would have been staring directly at the wall as they approached and had given in to the temptation to fix things. It only made the contrast more obvious.

It was times like this he had the most trouble understanding their predecessors. It had been possible for them, after all, even if their abilities were like a dim star to the sun. If they'd used pokemon to carve the path, they could have used pokemon to finish it. But they hadn't. They'd just...left it. Like they were satisfied, like it wasn't a grating, present irritant every time they looked, like they didn't even notice.

Either it hadn't bothered them, or they hadn't been able to rouse themselves to fix the problem. Both were as hard to imagine.

Oh, this place was tolerable. There was an aesthetic to the unaesthetic, in small doses, and Deus, for his part, found it easy to leave the sides of the path alone. But this wasn't a used path between places, it was a destination in itself. If he or anyone else had actually made it, intending it for actual travel on a regular basis, they'd never have left it so flawed.

Deus reflected that most of the things left alone as examples of the predecessors were largely examples of their mistakes and sloppiness, then that it was hardly his fault it was their distinguishing feature.

At length he was brought out of his thoughts by a geodude uncurling in front of him and jumping up and down. Deus crouched so that it reached eye level on its jumps, examining its thoughts.

They were unusually fast, more like shifting sand than the slow, gravely minds of the other geodude he could feel around him, and it was easy to see the most recent ones swirling around. It was curious why he was there. In lieu of answering he reached in and pulled up memories of it asking another that same question, tacking the response firmly down onto its poor memory, like pressing sand to sandstone. It was an unusually flighty geodude, which perhaps explained its uncharacteristic curiosity.

It would be an interesting one to take. The slower thinking pokemon were largely ignored as tiresome and faintly abominable if one considered them too long. A tolerable geodude was a rare thing. But he already had the sandshrew, didn't want a fourth pokemon yet, and handling the vulpix's still half-unformed mind was enough for now. He'd leave it for someone else.

He'd grown tired of contemplating the irregularities around him and jumped from the path to the top of the wall above it. He began heading southeast, hopping between the thin trees that clung to the rock.

Deus had no interest in actually going through Mt Moon. Cerulean would have to wait for later anyway - facing water types with a sandshrew and vulpix was a poor choice that would lead to a lot of tedious battling.

Thinking absently of what he'd do next, he trotted along. It was more regular here in some ways, and in others...the lack of any pretense of deliberateness, any thinking hand at work, rendered the entire concept moot. The wavy dimples in the stone where it dipped several feet into a large depression, a bit rising utterly off-center in what was not at all a circle yet rounded in such a way as to not suggest any other shape either, were here simply interesting scenery, not things that lingered uncomfortably close to horror.

The world, Deus felt, was regular in its irregularity, and always moving slowly toward a sameness. Things done by people should be the opposite, a clear brand of purpose across what was assembled by chance and accident. It was in the borders and edges that disquiet arose, purpose mingled with irregularity and unthinking crudeness, signs such a thing was possible.

They were strange things, those that came before, Deus thought to himself, and then put the line of thought of of his mind.


	8. Chapter 8

-

Complex species often have set timespans for development to take place, with distinct points to start and stop growth, and in many cases growth does not take place uniformly. During one portion of life, the growth of legs may be prioritized, or of body. Altering the time spent in various life stages thus alters both final size and comparative proportions.

-

The sandshrew darted toward one of the tunnel-crevices in the rocky ground. Deus grabbed it and marched it back over. "Stop doing that."

It thought something that, in a more ordered mind, might have been articulated something like _How can I escape when it always knows?_

"I can read your mind," Deus pointed out, annoyed.

It was easy enough to flatten down such things from moment to moment, and it was, of course, child's play to puppet the sandshrew about for however long he wanted. Actually altering thoughts was a trickier business. Anyone could just carve chunks out and make new pieces to fill in the gaps, but it was messy and almost impossible to do on a small scale. Psychic pokemon could influence thoughts more delicately, like tiny eddies of water pulling away a few grains of sand from river banks, their weaker powers forcing them into more precise application. Had Deus tried, it would have been a tsunami.

There were some adults who had practiced and trained to mimic such skills. A person, after all, could do anything a pokemon did, with effort. But it did not come easily, and minds were not like things, with an easily identified state of rightness that damage diverged from. If he erased something, what he replaced would be a replacement, a second thing made to fill the gap.

It would be losing his temper. It would be missing the point.

Being annoyed was a part of this too. Sometimes, parts of the world would be annoying, but should still be left be.

Mountains were not smooth, and yet they should not be. If they were smooth water would flood down them in torrents. Plants could not grow on them, or dirt collect, or pokemon live. They were not right or wrong, but changing. So it was with much of the world. He had learned this, and he had also learned that merely knowing was no good if he forgot simply because something annoyed him.

He backed the sandshrew out of its rapidly expanding burrow. "Stop that," he said again, wondering if he should find another pokemon yet. A belligerent female nidoran was approaching, and he directed the sandshrew at it.

They continued in this fashion for a time, until something large and armored lumbered out from the shallow cave it had been resting in.

The rhyhorn was enraged. It slapped the sandshrew aside with one swing of its armored head, knocking the smaller pokemon out instantly. Deus was about to recover his pokemon when the rhyhorn barreled toward him in a dead run.

He smashed it through the treetrunks, his eyes glowing blue.

A tendril of adult attention brushed lightly against his mind. "I am not a baby!" he retorted, shoving it away with mingled irritation and indignation. "It was only a few trees, I _will_ fix them I was _going_ to already." He hopped over to the rhyhorn's side, considering the groaning rock pokemon. It was relatively powerful, but he had no interest in that beyond some challenge - you were supposed to catch young pokemon, which made for better owned pokemon. If all of his had been tractable he might have taken it on, but he already had the sandshrew. He pulled the trees back into position and held them there as he reknit the wood until they were almost indistinguishable from how they had been before having a rhyhorn shatter them (He was not able to fight the temptation to fix the bubbles marring and stoppering the older xylem throughout the wood, and a year from now the only thing preventing a keen eye from telling for certain which ones he had first broken and then fixed was that they would not be only trees to put on a strangely large flush of growth. He was, after all, hardly the only trainer to pass this way).

\\\Small burrow,\\\ said a tinny, echoing voice a bit later. \\\Wouldn't fit you. Other not so good at digging, but would've fit you. Walk in tunnel, if'o crouch. He dig up something for you? What's?\\\

The speaker was dangling by its roots from a thin branch behind him.

"I do not need anyone to make me a tunnel," he said. He waved a three fingered hand and dirt sprang from the ground, then dropped again.

\\\But you've,\\\ it insisted. It waved a leaf. \\\Keeping. Small sand digger only. Only digging good. Not for fighting.\\\

"It can," he argued. He was intrigued. It was funny trying to carry on a conversation with something that thought in such simple terms. It was so strange to imagine being curious at the world and yet not understanding it. "It is just not strong enough for something like the rhyhorn, yet."

\\\Not need for fighting. Are can killing, you. Kill trees, unkill trees. Not need. Why?\\\

"It is not about killing. I am a trainer."

\\\Is why?\\\

"To get better."

A while later and one pokemon closer to a full set of seven, Deus felt a mind at the edge of his current range. It was not that of an adult, rounded and perfect, or the hazier fuzz of another child. What it was was...not exactly a square so much as what a square might become if it was remade over itself a thousand times, all flat lines and peaked edges forming into an asymmetric mass that, viewed as a whole, was slowly working its way into a rough approximation of a sphere. A pokemon approaching a person. (He wondered what _her_ mind had been like.)

He sent a gentle greeting to bump softly against the delicate spiky walls. He was rewarded with a torrent of babble that reminded him just somewhat of his few encounters with babies' thoughts, but full of math and endless calculation, trying to break the world down into something simpler for it.

Deus didn't approach it more closely. A pokemon like alakazam should be left alone to do what it wanted. They weren't pokemon, not completely. Clever pokemon like dragonite were respected, but alakazam were something different, something trying to be more than it was. Not a person, necessarily, or not by the same route. But something.


	9. Chapter 9

Saffron wasn't an option yet.

The vulpix's tail had split lengthwise. The right half had split again, unevenly, so that on that side there was one thin tail and one thicker one that twitched oddly as two separate spinal cords sent differing messages to two different sets of muscles. The one on the left was splitting more in more egalitarian fashion, with three tips each about as long as each other. Its breath was already heated, a shimmer in the air that turned dry brown grass to drier black. It would be able to fight by Saffron, but not well. It was likely the sandshrew might simply not fight, and both the nidoran and bellsprout were poison types, and thus easily confused. Saffron was generally the last gym faced. It was against their kin, and so puppeting and shielding would not have been fair. The point was not, after all, to prove they were stronger. They knew they were stronger.

No, the next place would be Celadon. The vulpix would be capable enough by that point, enough to balance out the sandshrew's weakness, and poison would resist poison.

The feel of the nidoran's mind had altered, no longer fitting properly to the size and shape of its body. It was bad tempered and kept pausing to scrape its sides against rocks. It felt like its body no longer fit within its skin. Nonsense, of course. It wasn't an insect or snake, its skin was its body, but Deus' attempts to explain this only met with further irritability.

\\\Blocking!\\\ it yelled at him. \\\Bigger! Not me! Innaway!\\\

"You will get bigger when you get bigger," said Deus, who did not evolve, without much sympathy. "You will not get bigger by rubbing a hole in your side."

\\\Not side! Inside side!\\\

Deus numbed it.

\\\Trick!\\\ it announced after a few seconds.

Deus marched it away from the tree, which by this point had a modest hole made in its bark. Nidoran hide was designed to be tough enough to take such abuse. "It is bad to destroy things," he chided. He considered and then fixed the tree. "You cannot do this so you should not have done that," he explained, then grabbed the nidoran and marched it away from the other tree it had been advancing toward.

It said something that was not _fascist_ but would certainly, after a great deal of intellectual and political advancement on its part, have formed the root of that word, and quite possibly a related swear.

Deus returned it to its pokeball.

Two days later he came upon a pair of children, which meant, of course, two people who were very nearly not children.

"My name is Deus," he said.

"Lakki," said the one on the right, and "Tsar," said the one on the left. Tsar was a bit smaller and must have been several months younger. Both their minds were like fluff wrapped in fine steel netting - not the full control of an adult, yet, but nearly so. Each had seven pokeballs and the taller wore a metal bracelet around his right hand.

The two traded off battling. Tsar went first, picking a gloom. Deus, thinking of the upcoming fight in Celadon, picked the bellsprout.

It did well, considering. The gloom wanted to use poisons and distance attacks, and the bellsprout was respectively immune and fast moving. It managed to slice the gloom badly before one good slam knocked it out. Deus tried the vulpix next. It was too young to properly understand commands, but it was physically capable of fighting now, and he wove it around the gloom's attacks, jumping about with its six new tails flexing to shift its balance. It managed a number of shallow burns before being caught in a paralyzing yellow cloud of dust, and falling stiffly over. He fixed it and sent out the nidoran, whose paws had scarcely finished forming before it charged.

It snorted and stamped angrily in the few moments before Lakki sent out his pokemon, a primeape, then barreled heedlessly forward again. The primeape blocked it with its stubby hands, sliding back slightly then shoving it back hard. The nidoran's feet left the ground and it tilted just slightly, so that it ended up landing on its side only to spring up again, cracks appearing across its body and light spilling out.

It glowed.

It grew.

It let out a triumphant rumble and charged again.

The blow this time pushed the primeape further, pinning it against a tree and clearly winding it. Then it punched upward into the nidorino's jaw. It reeled back, stumbled, and slumped down, shaking its head back and forth.

It was insufferable later, when he let it out again. \\\Inside side outside now,\\\ it said smugly. \\\Fake skin's _gone_.\\\

Deus could see clearly the patches of dirt and newer, clean fur making a checkered effect across its body. "It is not, you just have more now."

\\\Is _gone_,\\\ the nidorino insisted. \\\Stupid t'not know that.\\\


End file.
